le river
Ghorapachhar,[20] flowing over a bed of this sandstone. The soil all
the way very light, and the cultivation scanty and bad. Except within
the enclosures of men's houses, scarcely a tree to be anywhere seen
to give shelter and shade to the weary traveller; and we could find
no ground for our camp with a shrub to shelter man or beast. All are
swept away to form gun-carriages for the Gwalior artillery, with a
philosophical disregard to the comforts of the living, the repose of
the dead who planted them with a view to a comfortable berth in the
next world, and to the will of the gods to whom they are dedicated.
There is nothing left upon the land of animal or vegetable life to
enrich it; nothing of stock but what is necessary to draw from the
soil an annual crop, and which looks to one harvest for its entire
return. The sovereign proprietor of the soil lets it out by the year,
in farms or villages, to men who depend entirely upon the year's
return for the means of payment. He, in his turn, lets the lands in
detail to those who till them, and who depend for their subsistence,
and for the means of paying their rents, upon the returns of the
single harvest. There is no manufacture anywhere to be seen, save of
brass pots and rude cooking utensils; no trade or commerce, save in
the transport of the rude produce of the land to the great camp at
Gwalior, upon the backs of bullocks, for want of roads fit for
wheeled carriages. No one resides in the villages, save those whose
labour is indispensably necessary to the rudest tillage, and those
who collect the dues of government, and are paid upon the lowest
possible scale. Such is the state of the Gwalior territories in every
part of India where I have seen them.[21] The miseries and misrule of
the Oudh, Hyderabad, and other Muhammadan governments, are heard of
everywhere, because there are, under these governments, a middle and
higher class upon the land to suffer and proclaim them; but those of
the Gwalior state are never heard of, because no such classes are
ever allowed to grow up upon the land. Had Russia governed Poland,
and Turkey Greece, in the way that Gwalior has governed her conquered
territories, we should never have heard of the wrongs of the one or
the other.

In my morning's ride the day before I left Gwalior, I saw a fine
leopard standing by the side of the most frequented road, and staring
at every one who passed. It was held by two men, who sat by and
tal